The Hinky Bearskin Rug (23 page)

It reminded
her of something, this moment of tenderness.

She felt her
heart thump faster, louder. Her body was back, clamoring. She tightened her
arms around him and kissed back, fear turning sweet inside her.

When she
opened her eyes, the familiar stormy night sky had formed around them.

I thought we were going to die.

Shh, be with me here now. Don’t go
where the fear is.
She
lay trembling in his arms, listening to her heart beat, feeling his slow
approach, watching his smiling eyes.
Brave
Jewel. Let me brighten this for you.
Behind his head, a star burst into a
million golden petals that shot away in all directions.

She giggled.
Why don’t they fall?

He cupped both
hands around her face. Another star burst behind him. His eyes were so serious,
she felt small and fast and huge and scared.

He kissed her
again, and the frozen, frightened place inside began to thaw.
No one falls, unless they want to fall.

While she was
puzzling that one through, she heard another voice say,
Where are we?

It won’t hurt a bit,
Wilma said, walking her fingertips up
Clay’s chest like some Roaring Twenties floozie.
You’ll love it. I know more about sex than any woman alive. We’ll have
a ball.

“But — but—”

You need me. I know where they are.
Only a woman can get them out — and I’m all woman.
She blinked her cartoon-long lashes
and plastered herself against Clay.
Try
me, sailor.

He had to
admit, she was persuasive.

And that little problem with confidence—?
she began.

“What do you
mean, problem with confidence!” Clay protested. “Confidence is my middle name!”

You know. The girl who won’t look at
you? The sex demon she likes?
Wilma snapped her fingers.
Poof! With me
on your side, you’ll beat,
she said, leaning up to lick Clay’s chin,
the pants off him.

So that was
how Clay found himself saying yes.

A look of
wonder and joy came over Wilma’s face. She laced her fingers through his,
raising her arms so that he raised his too, and then her lips met his lightly.
Cool delight sank into him from her mouth to his, soaking through every inch of
skin on the front of his body, a happiness like vanilla ice cream on a summer
day, penetrating all the way to the back of him. She was so happy to be inside
him. He was happy just because she was happy.

Now let’s go get her,
she said in his head.

He felt like
he was walking on air. They — she — he climbed the handful of stairs from the
entrance level to the first floor and pushed open the door to the photo studio.
The lights were out, yet he found he could see everything, almost as if he were
a blind man who had lived here for decades, aware of every footstep, every
scrape of chair-on-floor, every drawer opening or door closing. The studio dais
was covered by a white sheet.

Wilma spoke in
his head.

Feel that? They’re in darkness. We’ll
need to call them out of there.
A picture of Wilma popped into his head, pointing.

He looked
where she pointed. It was dark. Duh.

Clay cleared
his throat. “Jewel? Are you in here?”

No answer.

Somewhere over
there
he heard a big firework go off,
and a million specks of light erupted in a chrysanthemum. Clay moved toward it,
following the specks toward their invisible center.

He raised his
voice. “Jewel! Randy! I’ve come for you!” How dumb was this? They were, uh,
busy in there. Wherever “there” was.

But with Wilma
inside him he laid one hand on the door — no, it was a bed — that made sense,
some faraway part of him thought. He poked his head through the opening and
called again.

No one
answered, but the darkness seemed populated now.

Clay
hesitated. Then a surge of pleasure left him weak, and in that moment of
weakness Wilma
pushed
somehow and he —
she — they stepped boldly through the opening into — what?

Where are we?
he said.

Clay?
Jewel said.

o0o

It was
super-weird to meet Clay in demonspace. He stepped through a door from nowhere
into their sky. He looked anxious. Poor guy had never walked in the clouds
before. He looked down, and his arms started sawing as if he was about to fall
off his cloud, and Jewel turned from Randy, catching a look of dark disapproval
on his face.

Hold that thought,
she said to him, and held out her hand
to Clay.

Clay took it.
In another moment they were kissing, and she noticed, oh, yeah, he was naked.
Jewel,
he seemed to say, though his
mouth was busy,
we have to give you an
orgasm. Right now.
She felt the urgency in his throat as if it were her
own.

Behind her,
the sense of Randy’s urgency saturated the night air.

But I — can we —
Lust was churning her brains into
tapioca.

Yes,
she heard Randy say behind her,
Have an orgasm, Jewel.
The mood of the moment changed: fear gone,
tenderness gone, leaving a raging lust.

Clay seemed
more assertive than she remembered. More alpha. She swooned back in his arms
and let him manhandle her, massaging her breasts, hoisting her by her buns to
hang her, as it were, on the hook of his erection, biting her throat and
nipples, taking control.

Whoa. Clay’s been taking vitamins,
she thought, and her thought came out
loud as a shout.

At that, Clay
seemed to calm down. She had breathing space to look over at Randy and was
startled to see Randy locked in a position so tangled that it could only be
something from a porn flick, with a blonde she recognized instantly as Wilma,
the Artistic mascot. He must have created her out of demonspace to salve his
pride.

She sent him a
pleading thought.
I want you, too.

Randy opened
his eyes and met Jewel’s look. He reached out a hand and pulled her toward him,
and instantly the four of them were locked together, spinning slowly through
the night sky, ignoring gravity, doing things she hadn’t done since that frat
party. Too bad Onika couldn’t shoot this. She giggled.

She would have
thought she could tell them apart in a situation like this. Randy and Clay were
so different, their moves in bed so like their personalities. But the very
effort of trying to keep them sorted out confused her, until a tongue was just
a tongue, hands were everywhere, too many hands, and no matter how many ways
she was penetrated, whenever she reached out, someone was wrapping her fingers
around a warm cock.

Then she
realized that Randy’s Wilma had got in the game.

The men
floated away briefly while Wilma took Jewel by the hands and raised her arms,
looking at Jewel’s naked body with wide, innocent, delighted eyes. Jewel felt suddenly
shy. She hadn’t made love to a woman since that long-ago frat party. Wilma’s
improbably spherical breasts seemed to point at her. Jewel reached out to touch
one nipple, and a thrilling wave passed through her just as if she’d been
touching Randy in demonspace, sharing his physical pleasure. Wilma drove her
fingers into Jewel’s hair and kissed her, sweet and cool, long and slow, oh
man, that kiss actually felt like Clay for a minute. Randy’s unmistakable
number-eleven hands slid around her bottom and up her belly and down between
her thighs, and Jewel gave up trying to figure it out.

Until she
realized that Wilma was teasing her nipples, Randy had entered her from behind,
and Clay was gently sliding his cock down her throat. The satisfaction of
having all their attention made her reel.

At length she
wondered,
Hey, how come everybody’s doing
me?

Randy craned
his neck in a way that wasn’t humanly possible and whispered in her ear.
Because we are all trapped here until you
have an orgasm. You are the chosen one.

She protested,
Chosen for what? To save everybody stuck
in sex-demonspace? That’s ridic—

Come for me,
Clay murmured.

Come for me,
Wilma said in a silvery voice all her
own.

Come for me,
Randy commanded.
Come now.

All of them
squeezed her slightly at that moment, so that she felt crowded and crazy, and
then they released a little, so she could expand like a squeezed balloon into
licking tongues, stroking hands, and strong members filling her. She gasped,
feeling her heart race, growing larger, and then they squeezed again, only to
release, bite, drive deeper, tease her skin, and squeeze—

Orgasm finally
blinded her.

Then the three
of them were lying on the platform in the photo studio, sweaty, gasping,
glowing, and kind of embarrassed. At least, she was embarrassed. Clay seemed as
calm as usual, and Randy probably couldn’t be embarrassed with his clothes off.

“That was fun,”
Jewel panted. “Let’s not do it again.”

“Shhh,” Clay
said, cocking his head toward the door.

Not a sound
came from downstairs. La Migra had come and gone.

She looked at
Randy. “You did that on purpose. Zapped us into a bed while we were falling.”

He raised his
eyebrows. “It seemed preferable to crushing our skulls on the pavement.”

“Oh, totally,”
she admitted, still shaken. “But how could you be sure I was, uh, turned on?”

“Sex and death
are close relatives.”

Clay’s things
were in a heap on the floor. Her clothes were piled up on the edge of the
platform, mixed with Randy’s. Silently, they dressed as quickly as they could.

“Let’s get out
of here,” Randy said.

“I forgot my
briefcase,” Randy said, and headed upstairs.

“Since when
does he have a briefcase?” she said, looking after his tight jeans and his mane
of long black hair.

But Clay led
her out to the car to wait.

“Jewel.” By
streetlight, Clay looked solemn. He picked up her hand. “Jewel, you know
Randy’s not quitting this job.”

She felt her
face start to crumple, pulled her hand free, and turned away.
Crap, don’t cry in front of Clay!

“Do you think
he’s happy?” she said. “Working here?”
Living
with Lena.

“Who knows. I
doubt that guy’s ever happy.”

She faked a
short laugh. “He hasn’t come to get his stuff out of my apartment yet. He
hasn’t zapped into a bed either. So maybe the curse is over.”

She felt
scooped out and hollow. How could he have made love to her the way he had
tonight, in the black void, after they fell off the roof, when she was so
afraid, and not care?

I’m thinking like such a girl!
She’d been wishing and praying for this
moment ever since she realized how dependent Randy was on her. And now that he
was independent, she hated it. She felt like a teenager, all swoony and sore
inside.

“You know,
this zapping-into-beds thing seems like something between you two,” Clay said
thoughtfully. “Not curse-ish.”

That made her
look. “What do you know about it?”

“I don’t know
anything.” He showed her his palms. “I’m just saying. You’ve suggested it
yourself. This seems negotiable somehow.”

“Like it’s
some kind of weapon he uses against me when he can’t get the upper hand any
other way,” she said resentfully. “I could believe it. He’s so sure that sex
will get him out of trouble — not that he’s wrong, goddammit—”

“Never mind,”
Clay said with an edge in his voice. “I’m sure you two will work it out on your
own.”

She shifted in
the driver’s seat so she could see him better. By streetlight his blond hair
looked orange. For once, his pouty mouth wasn’t smiling. “How did you know to
come and find us up there?”

He shrugged. “Logic.”